OCEANSIDE: Traffic signal removed on Rancho Del Oro after complaints

A traffic signal recently installed on Rancho Del Oro Road in
Oceanside was removed last month after residents complained that
city officials promised them six years ago no signal would go in
without neighborhood approval.

City officials said the promise had been forgotten and ordered
the $160,000 signal taken down in December, even though traffic
studies showed it was needed at the intersection.

"It's a commitment we made, so we just honored it," City Manager
Peter Weiss said last week.

"Goofy," was how Rancho Del Oro resident James Robert Hill
described it. Unlike many of his neighbors, Hill wanted the signal
to stay.

"You just kind of wonder, if they're wasting money on this, what
else are they wasting money on?" Hill asked.

The traffic light was installed in late October at Rancho Del
Oro Road and Cameo Drive, but the saga goes back to 2003 when some
residents objected to plans for a signal at the intersection and
won a promise from the city that the work wouldn't happen unless
neighbors agreed.

Before he became city manager, Weiss discussed the promise in an
e-mail message to then-City Manager Steve Jepsen.

Weiss wrote in the e-mail that, based on the issues raised, no
signals would be installed along Rancho Del Oro between Vista Way
and Oceanside Boulevard "unless absolutely necessary to reduce
accidents and (unless those signals) have neighborhood
support."

Years later, planning officials ---- in approving construction
of a $4 million veterans health clinic in the nearby Seagate
Corporate Center ---- required that developer Rockefeller Group
Development Corp. pay for a signal to be installed at the Rancho
Del Oro/Cameo Drive intersection.

The approval was handled administratively with no public
hearings before the signal went in, city Traffic Engineer David
DiPierro said. The people who made the original promise were long
gone, or ---- like Weiss ---- had moved to jobs where they weren't
involved in reviewing plans for the veterans center, DiPierro
said.

Only after the light was put up and people started complaining
did the e-mail surface, DiPierro said. Weiss said he didn't know
that the signal was part of the veterans clinic approval.

The Rancho Del Oro neighborhood is known as a political force in
Oceanside. It has successfully lobbied elected officials to stall a
long-planned interchange at Highway 78 and Rancho Del Oro Road that
residents say would funnel thousands more cars through the
area.

Rancho Del Oro resident Susie Coker said last week that she
wanted the Cameo Drive signal removed for fear it would encourage
speeders and draw more traffic through her neighborhood. She said
the stop signs already in place were safer.

In response to complaints, planners called for a Rancho Del Oro
community meeting Nov. 12. Roughly 100 people attended the meeting
"to voice concerns and displeasure of the process used to install
the traffic signal and whether the traffic signal was needed at
all," Development Services Director George Buell said in a Nov. 19
memo to the City Council.